[Tagging] highway=footway - Advanced definition: Distinction footway vs path

John Willis johnw at mac.com
Sat Aug 29 11:22:46 UTC 2015



> On Aug 29, 2015, at 7:17 AM, geow <ksgeo at web.de> wrote:
> 
> Along with specific sub-tags for physical and access properties it's the
> Swiss army knife for non motorized traffic.

We have a cutting block full of kitchen knives. How many people use the pocketknife to cut vegetables in the kitchen? How many people choose the corkscrew when a better tool designed for the task is in the drawer? The little saw to make a table? 

A pocket knife will save your life, or making camping way nicer. 

But no one uses them except when the situation dictates they must do so. 

I have 3 dedicated tools - the knife, the saw, the wine opener, and i want a screwdriver too.

The answer isn't "use the pocketknife" - I'm not camping or improvising a tool to solve a problem with my car - I have a dedicated job (mapping trails) and that requires a dedicated tag. 

Imagine if we had highway=road, used in some places for all roads, occasionally meaning motorway, major road, and residential road or a mix of them all. 

And i live in a place that doesn't use highway=road for anything other but tracks. So I wanted track to fill out my hard defined tag set (and leave path for situations truly meant for situations where its flexibility is useful) 

Saying "use highway=road" for my task is similarly wrong, as there is a great amount of trails in the world, and shouldn't be confused with others, just as a major road and track are so different. 

There are no sidewalks on the top of Mt Fuji. There are tracks and trails.

Javbw




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